Vitali Bartash | Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn (original) (raw)
Books by Vitali Bartash
This book explores the reasons for which weights and scales were used to measure goods in Early M... more This book explores the reasons for which weights and scales were used to measure goods in Early Mesopotamia (ca. 3,200-2,000 BCE). The vast corpus of cuneiform records from this period sheds light on the various mechanisms behind the development of this cultural innovation. Weighing became the means of articulating the value of both imported and locally-produced goods within a socioeconomic system that had reached an unprecedented level of complexity. This study provides a comprehensive analysis of this cultural and economic phenomenon, which simultaneously reflected and shaped the relationships between individuals and groups in Mesopotamia throughout the third millennium BCE.
You may order a free copy if you intend to review the book for a scholarly journal here: https://www.degruyter.com/dg/page/review-copy-order/order-review-copy
Please contact the author if you have any questions or remarks concerning the book and its topic: vitali.v.bartash@gmail.com
Publication and critical edition of 521 Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform tablets, archival records... more Publication and critical edition of 521 Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform tablets, archival records of palace and temple households, legal documents, and a number of school tablets.
The book contains the photographs, transliterations, translations, and commentary of these texts thus making these fascinating 3rd mill BC documents available to the broader public.
These cuneiform documents offer new data on the topics such as history of the early Sumerian states and the Akkadian Empire, management of irrigated land, management of personnel, textile and metal industries, slavery, hired labor, finanacial activities, agriculture and animal husbandry, food production, priesthood and cult, the role of women, and almost any aspect of the life how it was almost 5000 years ago.
Publication and critical edition of 212 Sumerian texts from Adab, Umma, and elsewhere: administra... more Publication and critical edition of 212 Sumerian texts from Adab, Umma, and elsewhere: administrative, legal, school (including an incantation), a fragment of a royal inscription, etc.
Articles by Vitali Bartash
IRAQ, 2022
Through philological and historical analysis focused on Gudea's slave dossier, this article eluci... more Through philological and historical analysis focused on Gudea's slave dossier, this article elucidates the causes and mechanisms that brought Iranian slaves to early southern Mesopotamia. The slave dossier documents a brief but intensive influx of Elamite slaves to Lagash on the lower Tigris during the reign of Gudea, ca. 2130-2110 B.C., who fought the powerful polity of Anshan in Fars. The author argues that consequent political instability and economic inequality in Elam fuelled three mechanisms of slave relocation. First, royal troops brought captives. Second, the palace bought foreigners from abroad and locally. Third, royals received Iranians as gifts or tribute ("kids led by one's side") from locals and Iranian states in areas where Gudea campaigned. Finally, locals gave their Iranian slaves back to the palace as gifts. On a theoretical level, the study distils four elements shared by all forms of slave mobility: the giver and the receiver, the economic and political relations between them that cause slave transfer, the physical and social spaces between which the transfer occurs, and the slaves and their demographic characteristics
The article provides a historical analysis of cuneiform records concerning the circulation of unf... more The article provides a historical analysis of cuneiform records concerning the circulation of unfree humans among the political-cultic elite in southern Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf during the Early Dynastic IIIb period, ca. 2475-2300 BCE. The analysis of the written data from the Adab city-state demonstrates that the royal house used the unfree as gifts to maintain a sociopolitical network on three spatial levels-the internal, local, and (inter) regional. The gift-givers and gift-receivers were mostly male adult members of the local and foreign elite, whereas the dislocated unfree humans were heterogeneous in terms of age, gender, and the ways they lost their freedom. The author relates the social profiles of both groups to the logistics of human traffic to reveal the link between social status and forms and nature of spatial mobility in the politically and socially unstable Early Dynastic Near East.
This chapter discusses the terms by which the scribes of central urban households (temples and pa... more This chapter discusses the terms by which the scribes of central urban households (temples and palaces) recorded human resources in the Late Uruk–Early Dynastic IIIa (3350–2500 BC) southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq. The author's main argument is that this terminology centered on age and gender,–those biological aspects of workers that were directly related to their labor value.
This article studies Sumerian terms for minors (dumu, di4-di4-la(2) and lu2 tur-ra) in texts of v... more This article studies Sumerian terms for minors (dumu, di4-di4-la(2) and lu2 tur-ra) in texts of various genres to define their precise meaning and relationship to kinship and age-grade terminologies. The author argues that dumu is essentially a kinship term “son/daughter, one’s own child, offspring,” which lacks any age connotations. In contrast, di4-di4-la(2) designates children as an age grade. As in other languages, words for children as kinship and children as minors often exchange their semantic domains. Lu2 tur-ra, lit. “minor” is another age-grade term. In contrast, it bears a pronounced social connotation and denotes those under patriarchal or professional authority, including children, youths, and young unmarried, or even recently married, individuals, as well as junior professionals.
The article discusses references to children in cuneiform records from Southern Mesopotamia datin... more The article discusses references to children in cuneiform records from Southern Mesopotamia dating to the Uruk III/Jemdet Nasr period (ca. 3000 B. C.). They confirm the presence of infants and children among the personnel of institutional households. Documents offer two patterns of classifying humans. The first describes individuals as male or female and then distinguishes between adults, children and babies. The second disregards gender but offers six age groups instead, four of which refer to children. The article summarizes and interprets the information these early economic records provide on the gender and age groups of children. It shows how officials of institutional households in ancient Sumer defined the childhood of their dependents.
Review article of C. Lecompe, Archaic Tablets and Fragments from Ur (ATFU) from L. Woolley’s Exca... more Review article of C. Lecompe, Archaic Tablets and Fragments from Ur (ATFU) from L. Woolley’s Excavations at the Royal Cemetery. Nisaba. Studi Assiriologici Messinesi (NSAM) 25. DiCAM, Messina, 2013.
Children constitute a large portion of every society. But the meaning of childhood varies from on... more Children constitute a large portion of every society. But the meaning of childhood varies from one society to another. This results in specific habits of child caring and raising, their legal status and overall life conditions.
Children and childhood remain largely understudied within cuneiform studies. The reason for this is not scarcity of data. On the contrary, according to my preliminary estimations, about 1500 cuneiform texts within the corpus of approximately 100,000 written records from Southern Mesopotamia dating to ca. 3300 – 2000 BCE offer insights into lives of children.
My ongoing research investigates a remarkable social phenomenon alluded to in archival records from early Mesopotamia. It appears that Sumerian temples and palaces supported and subsequently employed children from underprivileged social strata. My aim is to tell where this practice originates, its forms and consequences for the larger society. I suggest that the support of children had a clear socioeconomic purpose. On the one hand, socially unprotected children were not left to the mercy of fate, to roam the streets begging. On the other hand, both as children and eventual adults they were supported as an important source of cheap labor for the temple and palace economies.
I concentrate on studying three aspects: terms for children attested in texts and their demography, influx of children into households, and their support vs. labor employment. This article exemplifies briefly these aspects.
Umma was one of the most prominent Sumerian city-states. 3rd mill. BCE cuneiform documents record... more Umma was one of the most prominent Sumerian city-states. 3rd mill. BCE cuneiform documents record several names for what the previous scholarship believed to be a single city of Umma. Recent discussions and archaeological investigations strongly suggest that these writings refer to two neighboring cities Gesha and Umma. Due to the abandonment of the former at the end of the Early Dynastic period its writing has been passed to the latter. The article concentrates on the earliest writing for the city of Umma (UB-me), reevaluates the existing evidence and amplifies the “Umma debate” with the earliest textual attestation of the city UBme dating to the Early Dynastic IIIa period.
This paper looks at the earliest appearances of the Sumerian term e2-mi2 in written evidence from... more This paper looks at the earliest appearances of the Sumerian term e2-mi2 in written evidence from cities other than Girsu. The word is variously translated as ‘women’s quarters’, ‘queen’s household’, etc. Combining evidence from lexical, literary and economic texts, an attempt is made to outline the morphology and possible semantics of the term.
The sign combination E2-MUNUS is found as early as the Uruk III period, in which it might have designated a building or an institution.
The 3rd-millennium BC institution hiding behind the term e2-mi2 has to be identified with the ‘women’s part of the house’, where women lived and were children were born and probably lived until a certain age. This institution is found in the ED IIIb – Ur III administrative accounts and probably even earlier, in ED IIIa administrative, lexical, and literary texts. The term e2-mi2 might have been a part of each patriarchal house and was not confined exclusively to ‘palaces’.
The distribution of the material shows that the term is mentioned in archives from southern Mesopotamian, thus proper Sumerian, cities: Adab, Girsu, Nippur, Umma, and Zabala.
Addendum to my edition of the text CUSAS 23, no. 151 (Bartash 2013). This note adds the copy of t... more Addendum to my edition of the text CUSAS 23, no. 151 (Bartash 2013). This note adds the copy of the text's reverse. The document is a ration list which records barley allocations to officials, craftsmen and dependents of a Sargonic institutional household. Women, children and blind workers are mentioned among dependents.
Conferences and Workshops by Vitali Bartash
The conference "Humans as Gifts: Historical and Anthropological approaches" explores the understu... more The conference "Humans as Gifts: Historical and Anthropological approaches" explores the understudied practice
of gifting humans across various cultures. Historians
and anthropologists will delve into the motivations of
givers, recipients (both divine and human), and the
impact on the “gifts” themselves. Analysing aspects
like origin, age, gender, and status of these individuals
(war captives, slaves, ex voto offerings), the
conference will examine how this practice
transformed their lives and social standing. Did these
human “gifts” gain or lose freedom under their new
masters?
Workshop Organizer
Dr. Vitali Bartash
vbartash@uni-bonn.de
Please register by 15 May via email to:
Jan Hörber
Event Coordinator
events@dependency.uni-bonn.de
+49 228 73 62945
This book explores the reasons for which weights and scales were used to measure goods in Early M... more This book explores the reasons for which weights and scales were used to measure goods in Early Mesopotamia (ca. 3,200-2,000 BCE). The vast corpus of cuneiform records from this period sheds light on the various mechanisms behind the development of this cultural innovation. Weighing became the means of articulating the value of both imported and locally-produced goods within a socioeconomic system that had reached an unprecedented level of complexity. This study provides a comprehensive analysis of this cultural and economic phenomenon, which simultaneously reflected and shaped the relationships between individuals and groups in Mesopotamia throughout the third millennium BCE.
You may order a free copy if you intend to review the book for a scholarly journal here: https://www.degruyter.com/dg/page/review-copy-order/order-review-copy
Please contact the author if you have any questions or remarks concerning the book and its topic: vitali.v.bartash@gmail.com
Publication and critical edition of 521 Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform tablets, archival records... more Publication and critical edition of 521 Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform tablets, archival records of palace and temple households, legal documents, and a number of school tablets.
The book contains the photographs, transliterations, translations, and commentary of these texts thus making these fascinating 3rd mill BC documents available to the broader public.
These cuneiform documents offer new data on the topics such as history of the early Sumerian states and the Akkadian Empire, management of irrigated land, management of personnel, textile and metal industries, slavery, hired labor, finanacial activities, agriculture and animal husbandry, food production, priesthood and cult, the role of women, and almost any aspect of the life how it was almost 5000 years ago.
Publication and critical edition of 212 Sumerian texts from Adab, Umma, and elsewhere: administra... more Publication and critical edition of 212 Sumerian texts from Adab, Umma, and elsewhere: administrative, legal, school (including an incantation), a fragment of a royal inscription, etc.
IRAQ, 2022
Through philological and historical analysis focused on Gudea's slave dossier, this article eluci... more Through philological and historical analysis focused on Gudea's slave dossier, this article elucidates the causes and mechanisms that brought Iranian slaves to early southern Mesopotamia. The slave dossier documents a brief but intensive influx of Elamite slaves to Lagash on the lower Tigris during the reign of Gudea, ca. 2130-2110 B.C., who fought the powerful polity of Anshan in Fars. The author argues that consequent political instability and economic inequality in Elam fuelled three mechanisms of slave relocation. First, royal troops brought captives. Second, the palace bought foreigners from abroad and locally. Third, royals received Iranians as gifts or tribute ("kids led by one's side") from locals and Iranian states in areas where Gudea campaigned. Finally, locals gave their Iranian slaves back to the palace as gifts. On a theoretical level, the study distils four elements shared by all forms of slave mobility: the giver and the receiver, the economic and political relations between them that cause slave transfer, the physical and social spaces between which the transfer occurs, and the slaves and their demographic characteristics
The article provides a historical analysis of cuneiform records concerning the circulation of unf... more The article provides a historical analysis of cuneiform records concerning the circulation of unfree humans among the political-cultic elite in southern Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf during the Early Dynastic IIIb period, ca. 2475-2300 BCE. The analysis of the written data from the Adab city-state demonstrates that the royal house used the unfree as gifts to maintain a sociopolitical network on three spatial levels-the internal, local, and (inter) regional. The gift-givers and gift-receivers were mostly male adult members of the local and foreign elite, whereas the dislocated unfree humans were heterogeneous in terms of age, gender, and the ways they lost their freedom. The author relates the social profiles of both groups to the logistics of human traffic to reveal the link between social status and forms and nature of spatial mobility in the politically and socially unstable Early Dynastic Near East.
This chapter discusses the terms by which the scribes of central urban households (temples and pa... more This chapter discusses the terms by which the scribes of central urban households (temples and palaces) recorded human resources in the Late Uruk–Early Dynastic IIIa (3350–2500 BC) southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq. The author's main argument is that this terminology centered on age and gender,–those biological aspects of workers that were directly related to their labor value.
This article studies Sumerian terms for minors (dumu, di4-di4-la(2) and lu2 tur-ra) in texts of v... more This article studies Sumerian terms for minors (dumu, di4-di4-la(2) and lu2 tur-ra) in texts of various genres to define their precise meaning and relationship to kinship and age-grade terminologies. The author argues that dumu is essentially a kinship term “son/daughter, one’s own child, offspring,” which lacks any age connotations. In contrast, di4-di4-la(2) designates children as an age grade. As in other languages, words for children as kinship and children as minors often exchange their semantic domains. Lu2 tur-ra, lit. “minor” is another age-grade term. In contrast, it bears a pronounced social connotation and denotes those under patriarchal or professional authority, including children, youths, and young unmarried, or even recently married, individuals, as well as junior professionals.
The article discusses references to children in cuneiform records from Southern Mesopotamia datin... more The article discusses references to children in cuneiform records from Southern Mesopotamia dating to the Uruk III/Jemdet Nasr period (ca. 3000 B. C.). They confirm the presence of infants and children among the personnel of institutional households. Documents offer two patterns of classifying humans. The first describes individuals as male or female and then distinguishes between adults, children and babies. The second disregards gender but offers six age groups instead, four of which refer to children. The article summarizes and interprets the information these early economic records provide on the gender and age groups of children. It shows how officials of institutional households in ancient Sumer defined the childhood of their dependents.
Review article of C. Lecompe, Archaic Tablets and Fragments from Ur (ATFU) from L. Woolley’s Exca... more Review article of C. Lecompe, Archaic Tablets and Fragments from Ur (ATFU) from L. Woolley’s Excavations at the Royal Cemetery. Nisaba. Studi Assiriologici Messinesi (NSAM) 25. DiCAM, Messina, 2013.
Children constitute a large portion of every society. But the meaning of childhood varies from on... more Children constitute a large portion of every society. But the meaning of childhood varies from one society to another. This results in specific habits of child caring and raising, their legal status and overall life conditions.
Children and childhood remain largely understudied within cuneiform studies. The reason for this is not scarcity of data. On the contrary, according to my preliminary estimations, about 1500 cuneiform texts within the corpus of approximately 100,000 written records from Southern Mesopotamia dating to ca. 3300 – 2000 BCE offer insights into lives of children.
My ongoing research investigates a remarkable social phenomenon alluded to in archival records from early Mesopotamia. It appears that Sumerian temples and palaces supported and subsequently employed children from underprivileged social strata. My aim is to tell where this practice originates, its forms and consequences for the larger society. I suggest that the support of children had a clear socioeconomic purpose. On the one hand, socially unprotected children were not left to the mercy of fate, to roam the streets begging. On the other hand, both as children and eventual adults they were supported as an important source of cheap labor for the temple and palace economies.
I concentrate on studying three aspects: terms for children attested in texts and their demography, influx of children into households, and their support vs. labor employment. This article exemplifies briefly these aspects.
Umma was one of the most prominent Sumerian city-states. 3rd mill. BCE cuneiform documents record... more Umma was one of the most prominent Sumerian city-states. 3rd mill. BCE cuneiform documents record several names for what the previous scholarship believed to be a single city of Umma. Recent discussions and archaeological investigations strongly suggest that these writings refer to two neighboring cities Gesha and Umma. Due to the abandonment of the former at the end of the Early Dynastic period its writing has been passed to the latter. The article concentrates on the earliest writing for the city of Umma (UB-me), reevaluates the existing evidence and amplifies the “Umma debate” with the earliest textual attestation of the city UBme dating to the Early Dynastic IIIa period.
This paper looks at the earliest appearances of the Sumerian term e2-mi2 in written evidence from... more This paper looks at the earliest appearances of the Sumerian term e2-mi2 in written evidence from cities other than Girsu. The word is variously translated as ‘women’s quarters’, ‘queen’s household’, etc. Combining evidence from lexical, literary and economic texts, an attempt is made to outline the morphology and possible semantics of the term.
The sign combination E2-MUNUS is found as early as the Uruk III period, in which it might have designated a building or an institution.
The 3rd-millennium BC institution hiding behind the term e2-mi2 has to be identified with the ‘women’s part of the house’, where women lived and were children were born and probably lived until a certain age. This institution is found in the ED IIIb – Ur III administrative accounts and probably even earlier, in ED IIIa administrative, lexical, and literary texts. The term e2-mi2 might have been a part of each patriarchal house and was not confined exclusively to ‘palaces’.
The distribution of the material shows that the term is mentioned in archives from southern Mesopotamian, thus proper Sumerian, cities: Adab, Girsu, Nippur, Umma, and Zabala.
Addendum to my edition of the text CUSAS 23, no. 151 (Bartash 2013). This note adds the copy of t... more Addendum to my edition of the text CUSAS 23, no. 151 (Bartash 2013). This note adds the copy of the text's reverse. The document is a ration list which records barley allocations to officials, craftsmen and dependents of a Sargonic institutional household. Women, children and blind workers are mentioned among dependents.
The conference "Humans as Gifts: Historical and Anthropological approaches" explores the understu... more The conference "Humans as Gifts: Historical and Anthropological approaches" explores the understudied practice
of gifting humans across various cultures. Historians
and anthropologists will delve into the motivations of
givers, recipients (both divine and human), and the
impact on the “gifts” themselves. Analysing aspects
like origin, age, gender, and status of these individuals
(war captives, slaves, ex voto offerings), the
conference will examine how this practice
transformed their lives and social standing. Did these
human “gifts” gain or lose freedom under their new
masters?
Workshop Organizer
Dr. Vitali Bartash
vbartash@uni-bonn.de
Please register by 15 May via email to:
Jan Hörber
Event Coordinator
events@dependency.uni-bonn.de
+49 228 73 62945
The workshop addresses the social groups in the ancient Near East that were not slaves but whose ... more The workshop addresses the social groups in the ancient Near East that were not slaves but whose freedom was strongly restricted by law, economic conditions, patronage, religious institutions and other factors. Contributions highlight the differences between these groups from citizens with full rights, on the one hand, and from slaves, on the other. Why, how and on whom were they strongly dependent? Finally, the papers find out if there were ways out of these dependent statuses.
When? Monday, 17 July 2023, 14:30-18:00
Where? Cleveringaplaats 1, Leiden, Room Lipsius 003
Speakers:
14:30 Vitali Bartash (Bonn), Humans as donations to temples in Sumer
15:00 Cornelia Wunsch (Dresden), The hoax of semi-freedom
15:30 Andrew Pottorf (Harvard), The lives and work of the serflike UN-IL2 in the Ur III period
16:30 Annunziata Rositani (Messina), Inequality in the bīt asīrī (“the house of war prisoners”)
17:00 Nicholas Reid (Orlando), Prisoners as in-betweeners of society (Middle Babylonian period)
17:30 Jules Jallet-Martini (Paris), Freeborn vs freed heirs in some Old Babylonian texts
Contact: vbartash@uni-bonn.de
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 2019
Review of the book Sargonic Cuneiform Tablets in the Real Academia de la Historia: The Carl L. Li... more Review of the book Sargonic Cuneiform Tablets in the Real Academia de la Historia: The Carl L. Lippmann Collection. By Manuel Molina. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia and Ministerio de Cultura de la República de Iraq, 2014. Pp. 317, 337 plts.
SUMMARY The review article discusses the recent publication of 66 early cuneiform documents from ... more SUMMARY The review article discusses the recent publication of 66 early cuneiform documents from the ancient city of Ur by Verderame and Lecompte. These texts belong to the Early Dynastic I-II period, the least represented textual corpus of the 3rd mill. BC Mesopotamia. The review highlights the historical value of these administrative records for the reconstruction of the history of the period which appear to have witnessed major changes in political and socioeconomic spheres in Southern Mesopotamia. The occurrences of the city of Kiš in several inscriptions is connected to the growing influence of this Central Mesopotamian kingdom in the south. The article also discusses the challenges one faces while attempting to date Early Dynastic I-II texts from Ur and elsewhere.
CHAMBON, G. – Normes et pratiques. L’homme, la mesure et l’écriture en Mésopotamie. I. Les mesure... more CHAMBON, G. – Normes et pratiques. L’homme, la mesure et l’écriture en Mésopotamie. I. Les mesures de capacité et de poids en Syrie Ancienne, d’Ébla à Émar. (Berliner Beiträge zum Vorderen Orient, Band 21). PeWe Verlag, Gladbeck, 2011. (24,5 cm, 200). ISBN 978-3-935012-08-9. € 29,80.
This book by Grégory Chambon, professor of Assyriology at Université de Bretagne Occidentale-Brest, is a revised version of his PhD thesis on the notation, use and functioning of the systems of capacity and weight in the Early and Middle Bronze Age Syria.
Our understanding of the numerology and metrology of the cuneiform sources from Ancient Mesopotamia has reached a new, philologically-grounded level, thanks to ground-breaking studies by Assyriologists and Mathematicians in the 1970s and 1980s. Ancient Syria, where Sumerian writing and numerology had been borrowed and applied in the local decimal numeration and measures, has received only sporadic scholarly attention. In contrast with the archaeologically well-studied systems of weight in Early and Middle Bronze Age Syria, there are no comprehensive descriptions of any of ancient Syria’s systems of mensuration according to written evidence, despite the existence of rich textual data from Ebla and Mari.
The present work of Chambon makes the first step towards eliminating this deficiency ...
The Heinz Heinen Kolleg brings together excellent international scholars whose research focuses o... more The Heinz Heinen Kolleg brings together excellent international scholars whose research focuses on different forms of strong asymmetrical dependency and slavery in all historical periods before the 20th century, and all cultural contexts. It is part of the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS) that hosts the Cluster of Excellence "Beyond Slavery and Freedom. Asymmetric Dependencies in Pre-modern Societies" funded by the German Excellence Strategy.
A new book series "Tigris-Nil" publishes monographs, PhD theses, conference proceedings and edite... more A new book series "Tigris-Nil" publishes monographs, PhD theses, conference proceedings and edited volumes with a cultural-historical focus on the entire Ancient Near East, including Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Iran, the Levant and Egypt. Explorations of media and mentalities, as well as studies that place their findings within a broader temporal, regional or methodological perspective, are especially welcome.
The manuscripts are peer-reviewed, with a commitment to a process that is both speedy and focused on providing constructive suggestions. The publisher, EB-Verlag, Berlin, is already well known for its publications in the fields of Egyptology, Islamic Studies and Religious Studies, and by the book series "Heidelberger Studien zum Alten Orient". The print is of excellent quality and the hardcover monographs are affordably priced. Another bonus is that authors can include many colour pictures in their manuscripts. The books are distributed worldwide.
You can reach the editors of “Tigris-Nil” via e-mail: Prof. Dr. Ludwig Morenz (lmorenz@uni-bonn.de; Egypt), Prof. Dr. Jan Dietrich (jan.dietrich@uni-bonn.de; the Levant and the Biblical studies), and Dr. Vitali Bartash (vbartash@uni-bonn.de; Mesopotamia, Iran and Anatolia).
We are looking forward to your manuscripts!
Deadline extended: 31.10.2023 Call for papers for an international conference at the Bonn Centre ... more Deadline extended: 31.10.2023
Call for papers for an international conference at the Bonn Centre of Dependency & Slavery Studies, University of Bonn, 23–24 May 2024
Why would someone give a human being to someone else as a gift? Who are the giver and the recipient? How does gift-giving affect the status of the gifted human? The conference “Humans as Gifts” brings together historians and anthropologists to answer these questions.
Anthropologists have dedicated many pages to the nature of the gift. Yet, they avoid humans as gifts. In contrast, historical and ethnographic records from all regions and periods document similar practices: A father to his daughter a slave as a marriage present, a ruler gives slaves as diplomatic gifts to his peers abroad, victors divide captives as slaves among their households, etc. A human is a donation to god or a temple in other cases.
We are looking for historians and anthropologists who are eager to answer these questions:
1. Who are the giver and the recipient of humans as gifts?
2. Why did they give and take humans? Was it a passing over of wealth and status, building relationships, exposure of unwanted dependents, religious practices, etc.?
3. How does the gift-giving transform the life and status of gifted individuals? Who were they before, during and after the gifting/donation: a free, a chattel, someone else?
We welcome case studies from all regions and periods. Our ultimate goal is to find out whether the giving of humans away “for free” was a universal phenomenon or a characteristic of certain societies, for example, those with slaves?
The Bonn Centre for Dependency & Slavery Studies covers participants’ travel expenses and provides accommodation. We plan to publish the papers as a special issue of a top-tier peer-reviewed historical or anthropological journal.
Please send your paper proposal (ca. 300 words) with a short CV to vbartash@uni-bonn.de by October 31, 2023.
Dr. Vitali Bartash
Bonn Centre for Dependency & Slavery Studies (BCDSS)
University of Bonn
Heussallee 18–24, D-53113 Bonn, Germany
CALL FOR PAPERS Workshop “Beyond Slavery and Freedom in the Ancient Near East” RAI 68 “Inequality... more CALL FOR PAPERS
Workshop “Beyond Slavery and Freedom in the Ancient Near East”
RAI 68 “Inequality in the Ancient Near East”, Leiden, Netherlands, 17–20 July 2023
All societies of the ancient Near East had groups that were neither outright slaves nor had the full legal rights of a citizen or economic autonomy. The law could define their inequality, as in the case of the Old Babylonian muškênū. Others were technically free, but, lacking access to the means of production, were economically bound to those who had (Sumerian UN.IL2, Babylonian temple serfs, etc.). A religious practice to donate humans to temples called into existence an “in-between” social group of Sumerian and Babylonian “dedicatees” (a-ru-a, širkū). One’s ethnicity, migration or deportation background or even gender could create these social grey zones between slavery and freedom.
The aim of this workshop is threefold.
First, we will identify the manifestations of the “in-between” status of these and similar social groups. What made them different from a typical free citizen, a paterfamilias with a plot of land, on the one hand, and a chattel, on the other?
Second, we will inquire into the roots and the nature of their unequal status. What kinds of dependencies restricted the autonomy of the “in-between” groups: power, economic, cult, ethnic or gender relations? On whom or what did these people depend: the state/palace, the temple, other social groups, or private actors?
Finally, we will investigate the entrance points and the escape routes from these social groups. Did people become “in-betweens” by birth? Did someone force them to join the group? Did harsh economic circumstances downgrade free individuals to a servile status? Could one hope for an upward social lift? Could one roll down to the state of a slave?
The organizer of the workshop “Beyond Slavery and Freedom in the Ancient Near East” welcomes papers that explore the “in-between” social groups and the forms and nature of their inequalities and dependencies. Proposals can be sent by e-mail to the organizer (vbartash@uni-bonn.de) until 15 January 2023.
A proposal should include:
1. the name of the speaker(s),
2. the title of the paper,
3. and its brief description (200–300 words).
The organizer will send a notification of acceptance by 20 February 2023. The speakers will be required to upload their abstracts individually in the submission system (https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/rai68) before 31 March.
Looking forward to receiving your proposals and seeing you in Leiden,
Best regards,
Dr. Vitali Bartash
Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies
Heussallee 18–24
D-53113 Bonn
vbartash@uni-bonn.de
Invited lecture at the Institut für Altorientalistik und Vorderasiatische Arhcäologie, Westfälisc... more Invited lecture at the Institut für Altorientalistik und Vorderasiatische Arhcäologie, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, 13.04.2023.
I thank Kristin Kleber, Janoscha Kreppner, Ingo Schrakamp, Ludek Vacin and many others for their thought-provoking feedback.
The paper discusses the concept "to return to the mother" (ama ... gi4) relying on all available ... more The paper discusses the concept "to return to the mother" (ama ... gi4) relying on all available references in the Sumerian sources of the 3rd mill. BC. My argument is that it does not denote freedom but it was a mechanism that led to freedom - for which there was no word in Sumerian - and other bonuses. "The return to the mother" denoted a cancellation of debts, criminal charges and forced labour for the free and the manumission of slaves.
The paper was delivered on 06.10.2022 at the conference "Freedom and Liberation in Mediterranean Antiquity" at the University of Bonn. This conference was organised by Hermut Löhr, and it aimed to contribute to a closer analysis and understanding of terminology, narratives, and concepts of freedom and liberation in their respective discursive, cultural, and institutional contexts.
The paper will appear shortly in a volume of conference proceedings published by W. de Gruyter.
The paper discusses the humans who were donated to gods/temples in third millennium BC Mesopotami... more The paper discusses the humans who were donated to gods/temples in third millennium BC Mesopotamia. They were, on the one hand, foreign prisoners of war whom the ruler and his men donated to temples. On the other hand, local rich and poor Sumerians donated their slaves or family members out of piety or to save them from starvation respectively. I argue that the status of these dedicatees differed from that of slaves and free citizens. Also, at last some dedicatees remained living with and serving their donors, thus becoming the dependents of both gods and humans.
The paper was given at the workshop “Divine and Human Dependencies in the Ancient Near East and The Old Testament” organized by Ulrich Berges and Kirsten Schäfers at the University of Bonn, 13–14.05.2022. The workshop papers demonstrate that (strong) asymmetrical dependencies determined social relationships and interactions in the Ancient Near East. What is more, the social-political and religious aspects of these dependencies cannot be separated. Instead, the dependency of a human on a deity and the dependency of humans on other humans often went hand in hand in the ancient Near East.
